Hiding

08/02/2017

Remember playing “Hide-and-Go-Seek” as a kid? My favorite part was finding the best hiding place: As an introvert, it was even more fun, because it meant I got to be alone for a longer time before the “seeker” found me!

Until recently, I didn’t realize it, but I’ve still been “hiding”. And, as an online entrepreneur, that’s not exactly the best practice… you actually want people to find you.

Some of the ways I’ve been hiding include:

not writing and publishing blog posts

not following my friends’ posts on Facebook

not commenting on others’ Facebook posts

not promoting my services everywhere I can

Part of the reason for all of this “hiding”, I believe, lies in the fact that showing up requires vulnerability and courage. I’ve been far too much of a perfectionist, as well — for example, I usually feel like, if I can’t get my posts to come out as “perfect” as I picture them in my head, then it’s pointless to even write them. Obviously, that’s completely false, but that’s basically how my mind works.

Thankfully, I have come across something that’s helped me to shift my perspective on this, and I’m finally working past these obstacles that have been tripping me up.

In his recently published book, “Authentic Content Marketing“, George Kao shares his three (3) stages of content creation. Stage One involves creating a ton of posts and such, without putting in too much effort. Then you publish that content — with zero expectations about how it will be received (I know… crazy, right?). George’s second stage is to go back through all of your ‘stage one’ content, after about a month, and look to see which posts got the most (if any) engagement from your ideal audience. Then you take that content, and re-do it, adding even more value to it, and you publish it again (either in the same format on a different platform, or vice versa). Later, you take the best of that ‘stage two’ content, and compile it into some kind of infoproduct (be it an eBook, eCourse, or something else)… that’s Stage Three.

That concept of pushing out a ton of content that you neither slave over creating, nor stress over its outcome, that was truly “revolutionary” to me … a mindset shift. George even went on to say that our job is to publish our message… and it’s our audience’s job (not ours!) to determine which content is worthwhile. Too often, though, we — as creators — are biased, and think that most of what we publish is awesome. We’re too close to it to be objective.

Anyway. All of that is helping me to step past my perfectionism and fears, and to just start showing up — no more hiding.

Two other things are helping me to move forward, as well.

The first being that I need to practice what I preach — if I want those I work with (via mentoring, etc.) to be vulnerable and courageous, then I need to be modelling that, myself. I need to become the best version of myself, in order to be able to genuinely encourage others to do the same.

And lastly, letting my fears keep me from sharing my message is not helping anyone! It doesn’t help me, but it also keeps my message from helping those whom I’m meant to serve!

So, that’s it. I’m done hiding. No longer am I going to let my fear or perfectionism keep me and my content locked away. Playing small serves no one. I have a message to share, and it can no longer be held back.

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Tell me… How have YOU been hiding? What could you do to become more visible?